[Zope] Superfast PageTemplates: Call for expertise

[Peter Bengtsson]

I just ran my python product for a spin with the ZopeProfiler (well done 
Dieter Maurer!).
My product uses PageTemplates (mostly through PageTemplateFile) and the 
PageTemplate stuff really goes at the top of the CPU timing.
I.e. the PageTemplate rendering is "slow". DTML is probably not faster and 
I'm not "blaming" PageTemplates as such because I understand that they have 
a lot of work to do.

My question is: How do I ease off the load on PageTemplate rendering?

What in TAL should generally be avoided, if possible, to gain that extra 
performance?
Are there any particular constructions that are "bad" to do with TAL 
syntax/formatting?
(I've heard that METAL is "slow" but they're difficult to avoid because of 
their great functionality)

I have already cheated and pushed some rendering down in the python class 
which sometimes outputs HTML. I don't mind so much to do that in this case 
because it's a pretty closed environment one could say.


Peter